Thanks to good land-use decisions and wise stewardship, Rock Creek Hills Park is a success story of multi-purpose outdoor recreational space, a small park that serves three distinct purposes:
- The heart of Rock Creek Hills: Neighborhood park, with playgrounds.
- A small soccer park: Two regulation fields, used by youth and adult teams county-wide, including the champion B-CC High School girls' soccer team.
- Park setting for the Kensington Park retirement community (which was built on much of the site of the old Kensington Junior High).
Beyond serving each of these communities separately, the park also brings them together, as Rock Creek Hills families, Montgomery County soccer (and lacrosse) moms and dads, and Kensington Park residents mingle & meet in the green kid-friendly space. We love our park!
On October 15, 1992, the Kensington Park retirement community (then "Sunrise at Kensington Park") sent a letter (below) to Miss Edith Ray Saul, describing their Rock Creek Hills Park setting: "... Sunrise is adjacent to a public park with tennis courts, playground, field, and walking paths."
On May 23, 2011, following a meeting of our County Board of Ed, MCPS Real Estate Director Janice Turpin (who, the week before, had called our beloved park "residue"), answered this question from a citizen: "Do you think that an Alzheimer's, Independent Living, and Assisted Living facility could stay in business long, once you replace its park setting with a middle school complex?" Ms. Turpin's answer was: "I don't know." Though this answer might seem shocking, it is perhaps not surprising, as there is no indication that anyone from MCPS has given any thought to Kensington Park or its residents.
Indeed, during Monday's meeting, Board member Patricia O'Neill said that her in-laws recently turned down a long-awaited opportunity to move into Kensington Park. Wonder why that would be? Did she warn them about a planned middle school complex that would be far too large for the site, with inadequate land and infrastructure for peaceful and appropriate co-existence with its neighbors?
1 comment:
Thanks for raising the issue on the impact to the residents of Kensington Park. My cousin lives in the building closest to Rock Creek Hills and I know that she and I enjoy very much the ability to go watch children, dog walkers and sport teams play.
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